Why does Donald Trump have a problem with Amazon?

Darrel Walker |Monday, April 02, 2018

US President Trump targets Amazon over taxes

There are also calls for e-commerce companies to collect state sales taxes but this is something Amazon already does. "Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!"

President Trump has picked back up on what thus far has amounted to little more than a one-sided Twitter feud with Amazon.

Some retail competitors believe the third-party vendor policy gives the retail giant an unfair advantage, which may very well be true - Amazon reported a provisional tax expense of roughly $200m in U.S. state taxes past year, pennies against their $177.9B annual sales.

"Amazon is doing great damage to tax-paying retailers". The postal service's contract with Amazon must be approved by regulators and must generate a profit for the service. In 2013, it reported a net loss of $4.98 billion, according the USPS annual report.

People use Amazon for everything from washing powder to furniture and many items are delivered on the same day, hours after the order is placed.

Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world, and its financials are fair game for critics, but Trump's distortions don't add up and are worthy of Three Pinocchios.

Hassett focused on the fact that Amazon does not collect the taxes on sales made by third-party vendors, which is estimated to be about half of its total sales.

As for the Postal Service, it has lost money for years, but online shopping has led to growth in its package-delivery business.

Trump has this backwards: Amazon supports a law requiring all online retailers to collect those taxes (though probably out of self-interest - the law would provide a barrier to potential challengers).

And for all the hipster antitrust talk of Amazon as a unsafe monopoly, it was only responsible a year ago for 4% of total United States retail sales (though that is an impressive number). Third party sellers have been crying foul over these sellers getting preferential treatment from the company but Amazon has always maintained it treats every merchant on its platform under the same policy. The USPS could charge more.

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But White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said no specific policies were on the table in regards to Amazon.

Sources say Amazon had cut ties from the lobbying firms last Friday and in their place hired Paul Brathwaite of Federal Street Strategies LLC and Josh Holly of Holly Strategies Inc, both of whom have previously worked as outside lobbyists for Airbnb Inc and Oracle.

Details of Amazon's payments to USPS are not publicly known. Its revenue from shipping and packages in fiscal 2017 was $19.5 billion, up 13 percent from the previous year. But there are other factors, such as high debt, and Amazon is not exclusively responsible. Toys R Us and other retailers that have filed for bankruptcy or gone out of business have said that Amazon's low prices were hard to compete with. "So has Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, Kroger and any other superstore that took share from small businesses".

But it wasn't clear whether this was because of some of Amazon's actual practices, or perhaps because Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO, also happens to own the Washington Post. The president would love to clip CEO Jeff Bezos wings. On Feb. 15, speaking at a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee, Mnuchin said he had spoken personally with Trump about online taxation, and that the president "does feel strongly" that sales tax should be applied to internet purchases. "It's really about policy".

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